Enlisted Man
by illuminata79
Summary: Mick has been in the army for over a year and has yet to fight his most decisive battle. A story of war and friendship (in three chapters).
1. Brothers in Arms

When I read Herman Wouk's "The Winds of War" last summer, I loved the words of Julien Benda quoted in the preface:

_Peace, if it ever exists, will not be based on the fear of war, but on the love of peace.  
It will not be the abstaining from an act, but the coming state of mind.  
In this sense the most insignificant writer can serve peace, where the most powerful tribunals can do nothing._

I think this is also a suitable preface for some scenes from Mick's tour of duty in the South Pacific. [Be warned that this is actually going to take us to the battlefields, so be prepared for quite a bit of blood and violence.]_  
_

A big thank you goes to one lovely Rooftop lady who volunteered as my research assistant, helping me find out some details about the army and above all solve the puzzling question of Mick's rank.

This one also comes with a nod to all those brilliant authors of books about World War II whose work I have read as a kind of research before writing this (Stephen E. Ambrose, Bill Guarnere and Edward Heffron, Robert Leckie, James Jones, James A. Michener, Herman Wouk, Norman Mailer, Nevil Shute, Kristina McMorris and Mary Renault). Not only were their books extremely useful for developing the story and getting into the jargon, but I learned a lot about aspects of the war I hadn't been very familiar with, like the lives and experiences of enlisted men, the events in the South Pacific, and field medical care. Part of this variety of nonfiction, novels and memoirs came recommended by another Rooftop friend. Thanks again.

What better title song could there be for this piece, that is as much about Mick as it is about those who fight with him, than "Brothers in Arms"? The original Dire Straits version is beautiful enough, but what really gives me goosebumps is the cover Joan Baez once did.

_Through these fields of destruction _  
_Baptisms of fire _  
_I've witnessed all your suffering _  
_As the battle raged higher _  
_And though they did hurt me so bad _  
_In the fear and alarm _  
_You did not desert me _  
_My brothers in arms _

_There's so many different worlds _  
_So many different suns _  
_And we have just one world _  
_But we live in different ones _

_Now the sun's gone to hell _  
_And the moon's riding high _  
_Let me bid you farewell _  
_Every man has to die _  
_But it's written in the starlight _  
_And every line on your palm _  
_We're fools to make war _  
_On our brothers in arms_

* * *

_July 1945  
An unspecified island in the South Pacific_

Jimmy came shuffling back into the tent on unsteady feet, ducked through the entrance and carefully closed the flap. I threw him a compassionate glance. He had just been outside throwing up for the third time tonight, and he looked awful with his hollow cheeks and sweaty brow.

"Better now?"

"Dunno", he grunted as he burrowed back into his makeshift bed of blankets and a poncho. "Feels like I've nothing left inside. No idea if that's good or bad."

I sighed. I felt his pain, but there wasn't much I could do for him.

We were all more or less used to getting sick all the time in the stifling, airlessly humid heat of these tropical islands, either because we had eaten something bad or because we had not eaten at all or because we had caught something unpleasant from those billions of mosquitoes and gnats and whatever other insects loved feeding on us.

I had a slight advantage over the others because I was more used to the tropical climate, but I was permanently drenched in sweat nevertheless, and, like the others, I was covered in itching bites and those painful sores we called jungle ulcers and feeling a trifle queasy myself, but not so much that it would have worried me.

Poor Jimmy was susceptible to anything affecting the stomach and had lost even more weight than the rest of us had.

I offered him the bit of cheap brandy left in the hip flask I kept hidden among my things. "Maybe that'll kill off the bug that's plaguing you", I said, holding the flask out to him and making to unscrew the cap.

Jimmy shook his head and turned his face away, gagging. "Put that away for God's sake, I swear I'm gonna puke all over you if I as much as think of eating or drinking something."

"Don't you think you ought to go see Doc Maloney if it's that bad?"

"He'll only give me his pills that always make me feel even sicker. I'll be fine in the morning, I guess."

I had my doubts about that, but Jimmy rolled over on his side and was asleep within seconds. End of discussion.

I didn't like the thought of having a sick man on my squad. I'd have preferred him to spend a day or two in sick bay until he had recovered a bit. The campaign on the island was as good as over and all left to do for us was mopping up, but still …

On the other hand, all my boys, as I had come to call them somewhat affectionately, were tough as nails and never missed a day of duty unless they were seriously ill or injured, and now, a year and three months after we'd sailed from the U.S., they still seemed to be convinced they were doing the right thing by fighting here.

I wasn't so sure any more. I had never been, in fact.

And still I found myself here, leading my squad, day after sweltering day, swearing them in against an enemy I didn't feel too strongly about, bellowing orders, giving directions.

There were times when I felt downright disgusted with myself for permanently encouraging this bunch of bright and courageous young men to fight a battle that seemed so senseless to me, to go out there into the unknown and risk their lives.

I remembered very clearly how surprised I had been when Major Stephenson had informed me four months ago that I was going to be promoted to corporal. "You're the oldest in 2nd platoon, you've got quite a bit of experience, and you have a certain natural authority that makes the young men respect and trust you."

"Me?" It sounded almost like a derisive snort. "Major Stephenson, sir, I …"

"I hope you are not afraid of taking over responsibility, Private Carpenter?" Stephenson had given me a sharp look from piercing blue eyes.

"No, sir, of course not", I had lied, giving the answer that I knew he expected.

He was right in that I was the oldest, and, sadly, one of the more experienced men by then, even if I hadn't been serving for a year at the time, and I had been the de facto leader of my squad since Kenny Terrence got his left hand shot off.

Staff Sergeant Terrence hadn't been the only casualty by far. Half of our platoon had been killed or wounded as we fought over island after island. We had lost most of the noncom officers who'd been around when I joined the company, so there were many battlefield promotions. It had probably just been a question of time until one of them would be for me.

So I became Corporal Michael J. Carpenter, and I have to admit that I had felt a rush of silly pride when I first wore these brand-new chevrons on my sleeve.

Until I realized that the lives of four young men actually, officially depended on me and my decisions now.

Patrick Leary. Richard Conway. Leo Henderson. My old pal Joe Kowalski.

None of them older than twenty-one.

The feeling of importance quickly gave way to a terrible fright.

I entered upon a bargain with fate or the Almighty or whatever powers there were. If I saw my boys through this safely, if I hung in there despite my doubts and my growing fears, I would be rewarded by finding Evelyn once this was over.

I knew this was childish, but I felt a desperate need to latch some purpose onto my involvement in this war I believed in less than ever.

The boys were great all along. None of them seemed to begrudge me my promotion. On the contrary, they seemed relieved the Major's choice had fallen on me and not one of them, or some overambitious ass like Pfc McAllister, a true master of the art of brown-nosing.

We were almost something like a little family, a close-knit band of brothers knowing from the experience of the past months that we could trust each other blindly.

Together, we had dug trenches and foxholes, cut trails through the thick underbrush, gone out on reconnaissance missions in unknown terrain and on nightly patrols in the jungle where death seemed to be lurking behind every bush and tree, and we had endured endless marches weighed down by our heavy packs and other equipment.

We had dressed each other's minor wounds, tended to blistered feet and jungle sores and hands and faces scratched and cut by the shrubs we were crawling through all the time, picked thorns and splinters of metal from sunburnt sweaty skin.

We had shared dreadful rations (Joe and Danny had taken to calling them "SOS", which translated as "shit on a shingle") and secret stashes of cigarettes and liquor, slept huddled together in cramped pup tents that had once or twice blown away from over us in tropical rainstorms, and we had cursed and griped about wet clothes and sodden boots and those God-awful bugs and the tedious boredom of routine duty, and most of all, the weather.

We had grieved for those who had fallen, and we had seen many others evacuated after sustaining grievous injuries, or because they fell seriously ill. There had even been two or three who'd flipped their lids completely, worn out by the bloody, grimy, fearsome reality of war, and thus were shipped home.

My own small squad had been largely lucky since I had made corporal, although there had been some casualties - Leary and Henderson had been taken to an Australian hospital within a fortnight of each other, Leary with a badly broken leg and Henderson with a nasty shoulder injury, but both were expected to make a full recovery given enough time. We had got Jimmy Boone, whom I could now hear retching emptily outside the tent yet again, to replace them.

As for Danny, my other friend from basic training, he had left the platoon long before I was promoted. I didn't gloat or tell him I'd see it coming, but of course I had been proved right in my concerns about his going into the combat zone with one blind eye. Not a month after we our arrival in the Philippines, and just after receiving a letter from his fiancée that she had a little surprise for him, he got hit in the left arm, by friendly fire. It must have happened because he hadn't been able to detect the hand signals of the guy from 1st platoon who was getting ready to fire.

I had tried to talk some sense into him when I visited him in the hospital tent. Of course he wouldn't hear of it, but I implored him, "You've got a girlfriend, and a mother, and Amanda just told you that you're gonna be a father, too. The best you can do for that kid of yours is see to it that he's gonna grow up with his dad around, for God's sake. Believe me, growing up without a father sucks no less if he's died a war hero. Do me a favour and put in for a transfer to HQ. I happen to know that Stephenson needs a new company clerk …"

He had screwed up his face in disgust, but I had remained unfazed.

"… and if you don't do it yourself, you can be sure I'll do it for you."

Danny had applied for the post in the end, and when Joe and Patrick began to needle him after he'd announced he was leaving to take up a desk job, calling him a yellow coward, I thought it wiser to tell them the real reason to save his face. He seemed rather relieved in the end that the truth was out, and the other boys were rather impressed that he'd got this far in the war without arousing suspicion, or getting killed.

I saw him occasionally at HQ, glad that at least he was out of harm's way, relatively speaking. He didn't appear to be unhappy there; he must have felt uneasy out in the field despite his outward bravado, and I knew that having shot one or two Japanese dead had troubled him deeply.

That kind of thought was something I tried to avoid.

You don't think much while you're fighting. It all sinks in much later, when you have stopped moving, when you have counted your dead and your wounded. Often, it was in the middle of the night that the contorted face of a man I'd hit fatally in the chest or neck came back to haunt me.

I dreaded these moments and taught myself to push those images away.

Dwelling on the notion of having taken a man's life, even if it was the enemy, would paralyze me next time I went out there, render me unable to defend myself, or, what was more important, my boys. I couldn't run the risk of losing my head in the thick of the battle. After all, this was war, it was shoot or be shot yourself, and I sure as hell wouldn't let one of the boys be killed if I could help it.

I felt particularly obliged to them after Joe had saved my own life. We had been on one of those hated recon missions, trudging through the thicket, hacking away at branches and lianas with our machetes, the straps of my pack chafing away at the irritated skin of back and shoulders through my drenched khaki shirt, the rifle I carried slung over my shoulder banging painfully into my hipbone with every step.

We had stopped in a small clearing to catch our breaths, and I was slapping angrily at a mosquito that had got into my open-necked shirt, swearing in a low voice.

A shot startled me, so close to my ear that I was deafened for a moment. I swung around furiously.

There was Joe, lowering his rifle.

"Are you nuts, Kowalski?" I shouted hotly, still shaken up. "You almost shot my ear off!"

"Sorry, Carp. Next time I save your life, I'll ask you politely to move aside first." He grinned insolently and pointed to a bulky shape lying crumpled among the bushes.

My heart gave a belated jump of terror.

"I happen to look over there, and suddenly there's that Jap, out of nowhere, aiming straight at you!" Joe continued in an excited voice, concluding rather more noncommittally, "Well, that one can't hurt you any more."

"Jeez." I had found myself dodging bullets more often than I could count, but still I was a little weak in the knees now. "Sorry, Joe. And thanks."

"It's okay. Just did my job. St. Joseph is the patron saint of carpenters after all." He grinned even broader than before.

"Ooh, so we've got our very own company saint?" Richard Conway chuckled.

Now that the imminent danger was over – Conway and Leary had quickly searched the surroundings for more attackers, but the Jap seemed to have been on his own – we were keyed up and giddy, as it happens after a narrow escape, calling Joe "Saint" over and over. (The name stuck.)

Not much later, Leary broke his leg on a similar mission when he stumbled into an overgrown hole in the ground. We hauled him back to the camp on a makeshift stretcher fashioned from branches and two ponchos. Doc Maloney scratched his head with the thinning blond hair as he tried to assess the damage. He only said one sentence, the same he would repeat two weeks later when Henderson reported in to him with a badly mangled shoulder, "You just won yourself a ticket to Australia, buddy."

The rest of us had been lucky in terms of injuries so far. The worst wound I had sustained had been a large metal splinter hitting me in the flank. I hadn't even noticed it at first and thought I had ripped my shirt and cut my skin on a pointy branch as I dived for safety from a grenade being hurled straight at me. Richard had to tell me that something ugly was lodged in my side, and Saint pulled the jagged bit of steel from my flesh with the pair of rusty tweezers he proudly kept in his first-aid kit, sprinkled the spot liberally with sulfa powder and slapped on some Band-Aid.

It took a while to close in the permanently damp environment that never allowed the skin to dry from sweat and rain, but it healed in the end and didn't give me any trouble worth mentioning.

The only time I had really been out of it was when I succumbed to a severe bout of malaria and had to spend a good two weeks at Maloney's hospital.

The Doc and I ended up quite good friends; we had taken to chatting a bit as soon as I was feeling up to longer conversations again, and we still liked to share the occasional cigarette break.

He knew what I really thought about all of this, knew that my view of the war was ambivalent at best, and he did not judge me harshly for it, although he had appeared an unlikely ally at first.

In his early forties now, Doc had been in the army for virtually all of his adult life. One could even say the U.S. Army _was_ his life. But even his belief in this war was beginning to crumble, having spent almost three years facing those tidal waves of wounded and dying men that never ceased to flow into his small field hospital which consisted of nothing more than a small array of scattered, ill-equipped tents.

He had nodded in agreement when I had confided my doubts and fears to him, glad to have found an open ear to vent my feelings to.

The only others I'd have trusted enough to confess my true feelings were the boys, but I could not possibly allow myself to undermine their morale by sowing the seeds of doubt in their minds, lest they'd get ideas and do something rash that would endanger themselves and maybe others, too.

Much as I wanted to tell them to get the hell out of here, I kept going as I was expected to, kept my mouth shut and wondered why I on earth I thought I could do anything to protect them from stopping the fateful bullet that had their name on it.


	2. Once More Unto the Breach

_Once more unto the breach, dear friends.  
_Shakespeare, Henry V

* * *

I forced myself out of the heap of blankets that served as my bed on yet another muggy morning, crept out of the pup tent and thanked the good heavens once more for the small clear stream that came running down from the hill and marked the eastern edge of the camp. I don't know what we'd have done without this source of fresh water that was still pleasantly tempered at that early morning hour although the air was already very warm. We were in for another hot, hot day.

I splashed my face without drying myself off and enjoyed the blissfully cool trickle down my neck and chest.

I ran a hand through my tangled hair – it had grown rather long again as we didn't bother too much with things as trivial as haircuts now, but it would certainly be a good idea to tame those curls before they got too matted – and rubbed my tired eyes.

Nights were never restful. I couldn't remember when I'd last had a genuinely good night's sleep.

Behind me, Jimmy had crawled from the tent and was approaching the stream. I was relieved to see that a bit of colour had returned to his cheeks.

"Mornin', Carp."

"Feeling better?"

He nodded. "Much better. And quite starved."

I laughed and said ironically, "Just don't have too much of that fantastic buffet breakfast."

"I haven't even got an idea what a good breakfast looks like any more", he sighed.

After what little breakfast there was, the boys and I set out for a joint patrol with Sergeant Olsen's squad. We had all but driven the Japs away from the island, but there were still some little nests here and there in the rainforest that we had to keep an eye on. The usual mopping-up routine.

We left the camp together and split up as soon as we had reached the spot where the path we'd cut into the hillside branched off from the main trail. We made our way up the hill to lie low behind the overgrown ridge that partly shielded the path from view, getting ready to give Olsen and his team, who were staying below, cover from above if necessary.

A skirmish erupted down there when we'd barely taken up our positions. I signalled to the boys not to fire just yet. Better not give away our hiding place too early on. Olsen had good men, and he and his squad of six outnumbered the Japs.

But not for long. Suddenly more men slipped out from where they had been waiting in the shade between the trees and bushes, and faster than I could look, one of Olsen's men was writhing on the ground with a bullet in his thigh.

We needed to act now, although it was difficult to take aim as not to shoot our own comrades.

Richard and Jimmy took out one Jap each with their first shot, and I drew a bead on another, focused, pulled the trigger at the perfect moment, saw him break down.

I don't know why I heard the small sounds through the clamour of battle at all, but there was a soft surprised moan and a little clanging sound of muzzle hitting rock to my left.

I turned my head ever so slightly as not to draw unwanted attention to myself and saw that Joe had slumped forward suspiciously.

Below, Olsen and his remaining men had finished off most of the Japs. Two of the survivors were about to make a run for it. I emptied my clip at their fleeing backs and felt a shameful wave of fierce satisfaction when they both dropped into the underbrush and moved no more.

Ducking back behind the ridge, I crept close to Joe, who was touching his throat with a puzzled, dazed expression on his face.

Only when I saw that he was bleeding badly from the neck and started cursing, he began to look scared and frantically tried to speak, but he couldn't form any words that made sense, his throat choked up by blood and fear.

Blood came spurting forth in a pulsating deadly fountain. The bullet had torn his left carotid artery.

I discarded my initial idea of dragging him off the ridge for safety, there was no time for that now, no time for anything, I feared.

Still, I desperately pressed my hand on Joe's neck, blood oozing mercilessly, relentlessly through the cracks between my fingers, flushing the life out of his slack body.

I didn't even call for help because I knew it was too late.

Soon his eyes glazed over sightlessly.

It had gone so fast that Jimmy and Richard, still busy watching the other squad's backs while trying to stay hidden, hadn't even noticed yet that something was off. Until Richard looked around to me for guidance when there was a lull in the ongoing fight.

I had slid down behind the ridge, still cradling Joe's now limp body in my arms, blindly staring into space, doing nothing to stop the tears running down my cheeks.

"What's wrong, Carp?" he asked. "You hit? You're all covered in … Oh. Oh, shit."

"For Chrissake, Connie, keep up that covering fire, will you?" I admonished him sharply, although it broke my heart to make him go back after he'd seen this.

Among the foremost things drilled into our heads was that we could not allow ourselves to lose precious time and focus mourning a fallen comrade during a battle, no matter how dreadful the loss. But the relative safety of our position gave me the luxury of holding on to my self-pronounced patron saint, our funny man, the boy from Arkansas who had been with me longest of all in this, ever since training had begun back in the States. I simply could not bring myself to let go of him.

I had closed his staring empty eyes and pocketed his dog tags to send them home to his family, just as we had promised each other to do if the worst should happen. I knew he had a photo of his girl, Jackie, in the breast pocket of his shirt, but I didn't take it. Let him keep it, I thought. Poor girl.

Then it broke out of me. "Dammit, Saint, who's gonna save my ass now", I sobbed. "I've told you a million times not to stick your fucking neck out so boldly, you gung-ho bastard."

He looked so young, too young, out of place in his khakis and helmet, like a boy dressed up to play, but it was a very adult death that had claimed him, senseless, brutal battlefield death.

Jimmy's hand on my shoulder shook me out of my numbness. "They're gone. We're retreating", he said in an unusually soft voice and gently touched Joe's cheek before walking past him.

Gingerly, unwillingly, I followed my bereft rump of a squad down the hill, slipping and sliding on muddy ground, holding on to prickly branches. I hated the thought of leaving Joe up there, alone.

Olsen and his men had disappeared round the bend in the path about half a mile ahead. They had been walking a few hundred yards ahead of us, all on their feet except for the one who'd been hit in the leg. He was sitting by the wayside, obviously waiting for the medics to come fetch him. The rest of Olsen's squad appeared to have survived unscathed.

I tried to breathe deeply to calm down a little and lead my remaining boys back to safety, wiping my bloodied hands down on my trousers. It didn't help much. They remained sticky with Joe's blood, an unpleasantly intimate reminder of what had just happened.

A burst of machine-gun fire rent the air.

From halfway down the hillside path, we saw that Olsen's wounded soldier had fallen over on his side.

"Damn, that's Ralph Kingsley!" Jimmy broke into a run; I knew Ralph was a good friend of his. "I'll go get him. You run on, Connie, Carpenter!"

"Jimmy, don't –"

Another salvo swept Jimmy off his feet as soon as he stepped into the narrow clearing where Olsen and his men had been fighting the Japs.

Richard and I, just a few yards behind, stopped dead in our tracks. Richard was screaming, and I elbowed him rudely in the ribs to silence him.

I looked around wildly and detected the sniper hidden in the sprawling shrubbery on the other side of the clearing. I opened fire immediately, blasting him to smithereens before dropping on my knees by Jimmy's side.

The ragged holes in his chest and stomach left no room for doubt. I stumbled to my feet to go and look after Kingsley, but he was dead, too.

Richard was kneeling next to Jimmy now, patting him on the cheek, telling him to wake up. "Come on, Jimbo, look at me. The Carp and I will get you back to the camp, and Doc's gonna patch you up."

"Leave him, Connie, he's got it", I said gently. "He's bought the farm. Ain't much we can do for him now."

Richard pressed his lips together firmly like a very young child trying to keep from crying, then bent to retrieve Jimmy's dog tags as I had taken Joe's before, and the small wallet we knew he carried.

As Richard was straightening up, a single shot rang out.

Richard gave a startled cry, doubling over, and I detected a movement from the corner of my eye, over there among these goddamn bushes that had concealed the sniper, and fired, missing, swearing.

The half-hidden figure pulled his trigger and missed, too.

My next bullet hit home. I saw the guy collapse and was about to turn away to look after Richard when I realized the piece of dirt had managed to get up again.

A blinding fury overcame me and I lunged at the shrubs, my rifle levelled at the figure, ready to shoot.

A shaft of sunlight suddenly illuminated his face, and I lowered the barrel for a moment, utterly surprised.

It wasn't a Jap but one of the locals; hardly more than a child, fourteen at best, more like twelve, thin and wiry and big-eyed, giving me a piercing look.

I couldn't possibly kill a kid, not even an armed one.

Stepping forward, the tip of my boot touched some small object. I looked down; it was his handgun that had obviously fallen from his grip when my bullet hit him. I kicked it out of his reach and grabbed him by the shoulders.

Very quickly, he had nimbly wrestled free from my hands that were slippery with sweat and blood and tried to get to the machine gun the other guy had been manning.

_Shit, that kid was dangerous!_

I seized him again, twisting his arm until I thought I felt something give, and threw him forcefully behind me into the path where he lay winded for a moment.

I checked the machine gun in the bushes and removed the round of ammo left in it, noting with some relief that there was no spare ammunition to be found.

The kid had meanwhile got up and was staring at me defiantly. I realized his trouser leg was soaked in blood and presumed that was where my shot had hit him earlier.

"Get the hell out of here!" I yelled. "Move your goddamn ass and _fuck off!"_

When he jumped at me the next second, going for my eyes with clawed hands, I was prepared. I struck him hard in the face and gave him a violent shove that propelled him quite a few yards into the undergrowth until he smacked into a tree trunk and crumpled to the ground. He yelped and hollered something that sounded like curses as he struggled to stand but fell back again and again when the injured leg gave way under him.

I hurried back to Richard who had sunk to his knees, bent over, clutching at his right side, groaning. He was bleeding, not very profusely but steadily, from a deep gash. I realized didn't have anything remotely useful in my depleted first-aid pack to administer a proper dressing.

I racked my brains desperately, looking around the clearing, until something occurred to me.

"Sorry, Jim", I whispered as I stripped off his torn shirt and undershirt, wincing as I laid bare the full extent of his wounds. I tore off some large leaves from a low-hanging branch to cover it up provisionally, more for the sake of my own sensitivities than anything else.

I folded the undershirt into a kind of compress, put it over Richard's wound and improvised a pressure bandage with the help of his own belt and Jimmy's shirt wadded up into a tight ball. It was anything but textbook style but I hoped it would suffice until we got to the camp.

"Can you walk?" I asked.

He nodded with white lips and let me help him to his feet. Leaning on his rifle for support, he walked a few slow steps, his blue eyes tearing up. "Oh fuck, that _hurts_", he whispered.

After a mere fifty yards it was clear that he would never make it all the way back.

Richard was a slight scrap of a boy, had always been the smallest and slimmest in the squad. He had been a much-lauded gymnast back in school and probably didn't weigh more than a hundred and thirty pounds.

Despite his protest, I swept him up in my arms. I could hardly feel his weight, obsessed with the thought that I must rescue him at least, trying to run as fast as I could with my load to carry him to safety, if there was such a thing as safety in this place.

Richard was still holding on tightly to his rifle, and it kept knocking into my collarbone. I didn't care. I just wanted to get us out of here.

We had not come very far when something hit me in the back of my leg. It felt like a large stone and wasn't very painful, but it sufficed to make me stagger. My momentum carried me forward, and I managed to stay on the path and keep running for a couple of seconds, hoping I'd get into my normal rhythm again.

I might have if I hadn't tripped on a protruding root.

Somehow I succeeded in twisting my body around as I was going down so I'd not crash on top of Richard, hoping to cushion his fall a bit, but still the landing was rather bumpy.

He groaned miserably, and I murmured, "Sorry, mate. I stumbled. Something hit me in the leg and startled me, a stone or something. Let's catch our breath for a minute before we go on."

I looked down at my soiled, bloodied khaki trousers and was quite astonished to realize with some delay that there was a hole in the fabric on the outside of my right leg, just above the knee, and in the skin underneath. It was my own blood, not Saint's or Richard's or Jimmy's, that was dyeing the trouser leg an ugly brownish red.

Only then did I begin to feel the pain, searing, throbbing with every beat of my heart.

"Oh, fuck", both Richard and I whispered at the same time.

But while I was cursing my own misfortune and the spoiled chance of bringing both of us out of here, Richard was pointing a shaky hand into the direction we'd come from.

Two Japs, still at a certain distance but clearly recognizable through the maze of tree trunks.

Very cautiously, I rolled over on top of Richard, face down, covering him almost fully with my much larger body, hissing into his ear, "Try not to move. Play dead. They won't be interested in a pair of corpses."

I held my breath and thanked God silently for my all my exercise in swimming and diving. I could go without inhaling for well over two minutes and hoped that this would suffice.

I heard their footsteps approaching, little twigs snapping underfoot, then a short barked exchange in Japanese that I prayed would not translate as "Shoot them anyway, just to be sure."

A heavy boot kicked me in the leg, jarring the injured thigh and sending flashes of sharp pain all through my body. I don't know how I managed to neither move nor scream out loud.

We were lucky.

They did take us for dead and retreated.

After what seemed like hours, I dared raise my head very carefully and looked around before easing off poor Richard.

"You still there, Connie?" I patted his cheek that was drained of all colour. Some agonizing seconds later, his eyes opened slowly.

"Carp? What the … oh, damn, yeah … Guess you saved my life twice today."

"Oh well. You promised me to invite me for your wedding, didn't you? I wouldn't want to miss out on the big party, and on meeting the lovely Sarah in person."

He smiled wanly. "I owe you. And what about you? Wasn't a stone, eh?"

"Huh?"

"What hit you. Wasn't a stone. You've been shot, too."

I nodded. "But it's only the leg. Guess it's not too bad."

I turned over on my back and sat up, wiping dirt off my face, and some blood from a scratch across the cheek. When I tried to stand, my thigh protested angrily, and I dropped back on the ground. No chance of hauling Richard back to the camp now. I might be able to walk back on my own, but I wasn't going to leave him alone.

"Only problem is, I think I can't carry you any longer. Seems like I can't even get up now. If only we had a walkie-talkie. Well, Kingsley's medic is bound to pass by here when he comes looking for him. Some time soon, I hope."

Richard was monosyllabic while we waited for the medic or anyone else to come and find us. I readjusted his dressing, pressing my hand down on the wound in an additional attempt to staunch the bleeding, and kept talking to him so that he'd stay conscious, telling him anything that came into my mind.

When his eyelids fluttered for the first time, I firmly squeezed his hand and told him sharply to stay awake.

He managed to keep his eyes open, barely, but his face contorted more and more, and he grew ever quieter, only interjecting from time to time, "It hurts, Carp, it fucking hurts so awfully." Or "I'm cold, and I'm scared." Or "What if nobody comes to get us?"

At some point, I realized I hadn't done anything about my own wound. It had all but stopped bleeding, but I guessed I should bind it up anyway. I found one last bit of bandage in my first-aid kit and wrapped it around my thigh over the torn trouser leg.

When I was finished, Richard's eyes were shut, his lips livid, his whole face a terrible waxy shade of pale.

"Look at me, Connie!" I slapped his cheek rather more forcefully than intended, and he blinked at me with a puzzled expression. "I'm so cold", he said again.

"Connie, I promise you one thing, if you die on me, I'm gonna kill you", I told him in a wretched attempt at grim humour.

He managed a weak grin at least. "You're talking shit, Carpenter", he declared before screwing up his face in agony.

_Please_, I prayed, _let that medic be here fast. And please don't take another of my boys away. It's more than enough that Joe and Jimmy bought it. Make it a long and slow recovery, if it must be bad, but let him live. Maybe it's all the better if it takes time, that'll keep him off the battlefield for a while, perhaps even until this madness is over. Bad enough that this little graze won't be enough to keep _me_ from having to go back into combat soon._

Not long after, Richard finally passed out and I couldn't bring him back around any more.

I was devastated to be so helpless, sitting here, incapacitated by that goddamn enemy bullet that had torn into my thigh, fired by some hidden sniper I hadn't noticed. Or had it been the kid who had managed to retrieve his gun?

If I was honest, I had to admit I had failed, as a soldier and as a leader.

Perhaps Joe would still be alive if I had told them to lay covering fire as soon as the first Japs had shown up. Perhaps then he would have taken out the man before he could shoot him.

What if I had detected the machine gunner in the bushes earlier, if I had mowed him down _before_ two young men from my platoon were slain?

And, worst of all, I had made that terrible mistake you must never make in a combat situation – I had relied on appearances and not reckoned that the kid, bullet in the leg and all, was going to get up again. Neither had I bothered to pocket his gun to make sure he, or some comrade of his, wouldn't be able to do any more harm with it.

I realized I'd better have shot him after all, kid or no kid.

It wouldn't have saved Joe or Jimmy or Ralph Kingsley's lives, nor prevented Richard's injury, but I'd not have been hit and would have been able to take him to the hospital to have his wound cleaned and expertly tended to instead of keeping watch over his unconscious body out here in the jungle, unsure when, or if, help would arrive.

At least he was still breathing.

It was cold comfort, for I knew his chances were deteriorating by the minute, but as long as there was breath in him, there was a glimmer of hope.

I simply couldn't lose all three of them in one single day – in one single hour.

I took Richard's hand and felt the pulse in his wrist, beating faintly but steadily.

He _must_ survive. I wasn't letting him go, too, not like this, not with all his life still ahead of him. Bad enough Jimmy's wife and Joe's family would soon receive one of these horrible letters. Richard's pretty Sarah mustn't become a widow before she even had the chance to become a wife.

My thoughts ran in circles, over and over along the same lines of self-reproach, punctuated by fervent prayers for Richard to survive this and for the medics to come.

And finally, they came – Horowitz, one of the company medics, and some stretcher bearers.

At the hospital, Doc Maloney said we'd both been lucky after all. The bullet I had taken had not gone through the knee joint, he explained, which would have meant serious and probably irreparable damage, but through flesh and muscle only. "It'll take some time to heal, but as no bones or ligaments seem to be affected, you'll be as good as new in a few weeks and go back to do in some more of these slant-eyed bastards."

I didn't comment on his last remark.

Richard's condition was more serious, but not critical. No inner organs had been harmed, just a partially cracked rib and a large, deep, painful flesh wound. He had lost a considerable quantity of blood, but it wasn't life-threatening.

Doc Maloney told him he'd be sent to Australia with the next available transport.

"And what about Corporal Carpenter?" Richard asked.

"What about him? He's staying here, of course. His is not a grave injury, thank God."

Richard's face fell. He looked like a ten-year-old who has just been told his best friend is moving out of town for good.

"Hey, Connie, what's the matter?" I said from my cot next to his, raising myself up on one elbow, trying to ignore the persistent pounding in my bandaged leg. "You want me to hold your hand or what? Come on, don't be a baby."

"If he's not going, I'm not going either", Richard insisted.

Maloney rolled his eyes at this sudden fancy of Richard's, but he remained so adamant in his weak voice that Doc nodded exasperatedly in the end.

"If anyone asks you what you're doing on that transport, Carpenter, tell them that I want a proper X-ray done because the machine we've got here is a joke and I'm not sure if you've got some kind of debris hiding deep inside that thigh of yours. We don't want you to lose your leg because someone at the field hospital was negligent, right?" he said with a conspiratorial wink and slipped both of us a cigarette before he left.

I was rather surprised, but I guessed that, knowing my stance on the war, he was ready to play up my injury and get me on that hospital ship to give me a break.

I wasn't going to complain.

* * *

_From this day to the ending of the world,_  
_But we in it shall be remember'd;_  
_We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;_  
_For he to-day that sheds his blood with me_  
_Shall be my brother (...)_  
Shakespeare, Henry V (St Crispin's Day Speech)

In memory of Mick's "brothers in arms", and of all those real-life men who lost their lives in the horror of the World War II battlefields.


	3. The Last of the Boys

The soundtrack for this chapter is from Karl Jenkins' "The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace" (words by Guy Wilson).

**Now the Guns Have Stopped**

_Silent,  
So silent, now,  
Now the guns have stopped  
_

_I have survived all,  
I, who knew I would not.  
But now you are not here.  
I shall go home, alone;  
And must try to live life as before,  
And hide my grief  
For you, my dearest friend,  
Who should be with me now,  
Not cold, too soon,  
And in your grave,  
Alone.  
_

* * *

So Richard and I went off on the hospital ship a couple of days later.

For most of the way I sat by Richard's side on an uncomfortable folding chair, with the crutch they'd given me to help keep my weight off the injured thigh, and my outstretched leg itself, constantly in the way of the staff going about their business.

Richard was running a high fever, often crying out in his fitful sleep, talking nonsense when he was awake, even swatting at the nurses' hands and faces when they came close to him.

With the ship full to bursting, they were not ungrateful that someone was looking after the raving young soldier, even if it was this limping corporal who they thought shouldn't have been out of bed so much.

When we arrived at our destination, a military hospital in Brisbane, we were assigned to different wards, but as I was allowed to be up and about as long as I didn't put too much strain on my leg, I spent a lot of time with Richard. There were one or two friendly nurses who knew about our close ties and organized a chair for me to sit on and some stuff to read to him while he was still too weak to hold a book or a newspaper.

He was rather poorly during our first days at the hospital, but once his fever had broken, I was happy to see him improving by the day.

My own progress was slower. I was still leaning quite heavily on my crutch when I walked; putting weight on my right leg remained a very painful affair.

When Richard asked me how my leg was doing after he'd seen me wince while lowering myself onto the chair, I said, "Seems to be taking its time to heal, that one. It hurts quite a bit." Remembering something Grandma used to say when I was ill, I added, "Well, maybe it's gotta get worse before it gets better."

Apart from the aching leg, I must admit I kind of enjoyed my stay in the hospital. I hadn't seen a proper bed in ages, even if this one was narrow and old, the meals were not exactly of the gourmet variety, but they came regularly and in sufficient portions, and there was no danger of being attacked and ambushed, no snipers, no grenades, no bullets, no Japs. No comrades moaning in pain or lying frightfully still amid the noise of battle.

I was slowly beginning to understand why someone would fake a nervous breakdown or some obscure illness to wangle a time-out at the hospital, and I wondered if there was any realistic chance the war would be over by the time my wound had healed.

From what I had read in the papers we'd been given I didn't actually believe it would.

Once, I mused about whether I could get one of the doctors, maybe that youngish, sympathetic-looking one, to make up a little complication – nothing really dangerous of course, just something lengthy that would buy me a few weeks.

I was ashamed of myself the very minute I'd allowed myself to think like that.

I ought to be rather glad that I was alive and not even gravely injured. Doc Maloney sending me on the hospital transport had been questionable enough, considering that I didn't actually have more than a large flesh wound, not even a fever.

Anyway, at night, when the ward was never fully quiet with dozens of men snoring and moaning and talking in their sleep, I was often thankful for being out of it for a while, for not having to witness more of my comrades dropping dead, felled instantly by a well-placed shot or slowly bleeding to death from a less well-placed one, to say nothing of all those who hadn't come back from hospital because their injuries had been too grave, and I found myself beginning to pray for a quick end to all the bloodshed.

I wasn't sure if God was inclined to listen to someone who had been neglecting Him for a good part of his life, but I sent some ardent pleas for divine intervention into the unrestful night nevertheless as I lay in my metal bed with the thin sagging mattress and peeling white paint, the smell of illness and decay and disinfectant sickeningly thick in my nose and my thigh feeling almost as raw and sore two weeks after arrival at the hospital as it had on that fateful day in the jungle.

Slowly, I began to suspect that I wouldn't need to persuade anyone to certify some fake complication. Shouldn't it have healed much better by now, at least on the surface?

I didn't look closely when they changed the dressing, but I was sure that the ragged weal I had glimpsed wasn't supposed to weep and suppurate as much as it did after almost three weeks.

I tried to ask one of the nurses' opinion, but all I got was a reprimand for being out of bed so much to look after Richard, whose good progress had continued and who would be discharged within a week or so.

I didn't protest because I knew it was no use. I had told her and the others countless times that my recovery certainly wouldn't be helped much if I got bored to death, lying around idly with only outdated newspapers and the odd much-thumbed paperback classic to read, having my horribly chatty neighbour, a naval officer confined to his bed with a broken shoulder in a huge plaster cast attached to traction wires, talk my ear off. bragging about all the brave stunts he had pulled in the course of his career.

Richard's face always lit up like a beacon when I came to see him. We had made a habit of playing cards or trying to work out the newspaper crossword if nobody had beaten us to it, or simply talked of everything and nothing. It was a rather pleasant way to pass time, and it gave me the much-needed certainty that at least one of my boys was going to pull through.

The loss of Joe and Jimmy still weighed heavily on me, and I hadn't had any word of Leary or Henderson after they had been shipped to Australian hospitals. Not this one, I had found out that much.

I guessed Henderson's shattered shoulder was the kind of "million-dollar wound" many comrades would secretly envy him for – bad enough to be classified unfit for duty and get sent home, but not life-threatening, although you never knew in those days how something supposedly harmless might turn out.

I was made aware of this myself when, the morning after Richard had told me with a blissful smile that he'd be heading back by end of the week, our roles were suddenly reversed.

I woke up early with my knee and thigh throbbing worse than ever, and when my hand slid under the thin covers to touch the bandage, I jerked it back in alarm and threw off the covers to find an ominous dark wet stain on my hospital-issue pajama bottoms.

I rang for a nurse, and the ever-composed stern face of Nurse Worthington displayed some human emotion for the first time I could remember as she surveyed the disaster. Blood and exudate had seeped through the bandage and made the thin fabric of my pajamas stick to the gauze so that both layers were clinging together inextricably.

Despite a sinking feeling in my stomach, I couldn't help watching Worthy cut away the fabric and the bandage and expose the jagged edges of the wound, caked with dried blood, festering badly. The surrounding skin was very red, and the swelling and tension that had been there all the time had become so bad that it was impossible to bend the knee.

No wonder I had had no desire to get up since the previous morning. I told Worthy that I had been feeling weak and queasy and unpleasantly hot since yesterday afternoon, as if the unhealthy warmth of the inflamed wound was spreading throughout my body.

Upon hearing this, she went to get the doctor, and from that day on it was Richard who came to visit me, as I wasn't allowed out of bed any more.

Not that I would have wanted to be, actually. The leg flared up sharply every time I did as much as shift in bed a little. I didn't even want to try and rise, feeling feverish and feeble.

"It should be better in a few days' time when the penicillin takes effect", the doctor promised as he hooked me up to an IV drip of antibiotics.

It wasn't.

They resorted to removing what they called necrotic tissue from the edge of the wound several times while keeping up the medication, but neither the swelling nor the pain relented.

Nobody told me so explicitly, but from the murmured exchanges I overheard, I knew they feared the infection was going to damage more and more tissue and finally invade the bone if they couldn't get it under control.

Again and again, I came close to asking the doctor bluntly what he really thought the outlook was, but every time refrained from it in the end because I was afraid of the answer.

So I simply waited for something decisive to happen, one way or the other.

Richard came to see me for the last time on a Friday end of July, fully dressed, smiling, his cheeks a healthy pink again. He was going to have two days of leave over the weekend and ship out to the islands on Monday morning.

He snapped out a perfect salute, which I returned. His greeting wasn't out of the soldier's manual, though.

"Can I be honest with you, Carp?" he said without introduction. "You're looking like shit, like someone's chewed you up and spit you out again."

"Thank you very much for the compliment, Private Conway." I grinned wryly in spite of myself. "But - what kind of manner is that of talking to your superior?"

"You're not my superior now. You're my friend. And friends deserve the truth." His face split into the biggest grin I'd ever seen, and I punched him lightly in the forearm.

"Glad to see you back on your feet again, and so naughty, too."

"Well, you know, I've come to say goodbye. Thanks for … for everything, Carp. Hope you'll be back soon. I'll miss you till then."

My throat suddenly felt constricted, and I swallowed before I replied, "I'll miss you, too. Take care out there. Remember you've got a lovely girl waiting for you. And don't forget to send me that invitation for the wedding."

"I certainly won't forget", he said earnestly. "You can be my best man if you want to. Be sure to wear your dress uniform. The girls will love you."

We went on in the same manner for a while, only half joking.

"Sorry I can't get up for a proper goodbye", I said as he was about to go, gesturing vaguely at the covers hiding the swollen painful bandaged mess that was my right leg and at the IV needle in the back of my left hand.

"Don't worry." Richard leaned over the bed and locked me into a hearty embrace as best he could.

I patted his back with my free hand and tried not to give in to the prickling behind my eyelids, not as long as he could still see me.

I watched him go until his narrow back in the uniform jacket had disappeared from view around a corner of the corridor.

Despite the dozens of fellow soldiers around me, I felt very alone now that the last of my boys was leaving me.

My body gave in to the battle that raged within me the same day, plunging me into unconsciousness.

By the time I came around, Richard was long gone.

I never saw him again.

Nor did I ever go back to the war.


End file.
